As a Waking Dream
by clio21000
Summary: Over the course of a week, Sara’s insomnia surges until in nearly incapacitates her. GSR, with NickGreg underpinnings.
1. Chapter 1

**As a Waking Dream**

**By:** clio21000

**Rating:** PG-13 for a few naughty words

**Disclaimer:** Yeah, I'm really not making anything off of this. Believe me, I'd write much more often if I was.

**Summary:** Over the course of a week, Sara's insomnia surges until in nearly incapacitates her. GSR, with NickGreg underpinnings.

On the first day, Sara tried to go to sleep. She laid in her bed for hours, watching the pattern of light that slipped through the slats in the blinds as it moved across the blank white canvas of her ceiling. The sheets on her bed bunched in the center and then pulled loose from the sides altogether as she rolled over from her back to her side to her stomach to her other side. Though she was usually chilly, particularly as she slept, today her tossing about made sweat slick her body, and she pulled off her plaid pajama pants and her sweatshirt and then slipped back between the flannel sheets in just her cami and panties.

She closed her eyes for a while, then got tired of staring at the inside of her eyelids and opened them again. She memorized the pattern of the wood grain on the back of her bedroom door, and counted the number of patches on the quilt spread across her legs, then tried to work mathematical equations with the angles and lines and numbers.

Thoughts flooded her mind; old mistakes came back to haunt her. Grade school – being too tall, too awkward, too poor, too smart. Her parents, fighting with one another nightly while she and Peter cowered in his bedroom, playing I Spy and wishing they were only listening to each other's voices. The dark bulk of her father standing over her bed while she desperately pretended to sleep. The glint of moonlight on steel, the whistle of the blade coming down, the thwack and gasp and moan, and then the blood seeping out to pool around her mother's feet, so dark it looked black instead of red.

Sara squinched her eyes shut and flipped over again onto her stomach. She wasn't going to think about that right now – it certainly wasn't going to help her fall asleep. Think happy thoughts, she coached herself sternly. The full scholarship to Harvard. Graduating summa cum laude. The grad work at Berkley. The brilliant forensics seminar that had hooked her, pulled her out of graduate school and into the San Francisco coroner's office. She felt her muscles relax a bit. Grissom grinning at her over his dummies as she made lame jokes about Norman Fell. Becoming the youngest CSI III ever at the second-best crime lab in the nation. She thought about her coworkers, made herself categorize all their best qualities and her favorite moments with them.

Warrick, with his cool exterior and calm, weighted gazes. She pictured him crouching in a flowerbed, casting a shoeprint – he may have claimed to be an AV expert, but she knew it was his casting that was a real work of art. Catherine, so bristly, so determined to be the alpha female, the queen of the lab, yet offering her a wry smile and an invitation to get a beer. Greg, her protégé, so smart like her, so driven like her, so able to kick back, relax and really enjoy himself – not like her at all. She imagined him bopping around the lab with his apparently boundless energy, singing Aerosmith and The Clash, running fingers through his blonde spikes, flirting shamelessly with Nick. Nicky himself, with his polite down-home manners and his soft drawl, his slow smile and his cautious concern. Nicky, who made a point to make sure she got out of her apartment every once and a while, had tried to coach her on a nutritional diet so she'd get the appropriate vitamins and stop living on take-out.

Then she thought about Grissom, and the painful dance he had led her in during the last six years. He had called her to come to Vegas and she came; he had offered an invitation to dance and she slipped smoothly into his arms. For a few months, they danced like a long-married couple dances, anticipating each other's moves, speaking without words – a slight pressure on her arm and she knew to move left or right, a tightening of his fingers and she knew he was going to spin her. But then he released her hands and took a step back, not responding to any of her overtures or hints about their relationship, leaving her spinning by herself. He'd stepped away, keeping her at arm's length. There'd been little flirting, sure, like brief brushes of his fingers over forbidden parts of her body while they danced, but he never let her get close enough to make the touches last. Then he'd sent her the plant, and told her she was beautiful, and it was as if he had pulled her close, wrapped his arms around her, pressed his cheek against hers, and swayed slowly with her in time to the music. For the few days that the dance had lasted, she'd been blissfully happy. But he'd stepped back again, slipped once more out of her reach. And so it continued – a step forward, a few warm and teasing touches, a step back.

"Cha, cha, cha," she muttered bitterly, rolling over on to her back once more. Their relationship had always had that sexual tension underpinning, the delicious and delicate frustration that they kept brewing on the back burner. She'd been so sure that they'd get together when she moved to Vegas – for God's sake, why else had he asked her to stay there? Why had he encouraged her and then stepped away?

She turned it over and over again in her mind. She thought about it until she couldn't think about it anymore, couldn't think about anything anymore. Coherent thoughts finally escaped her, and she felt as empty as a shattered wine glass. She sighed a little, and drifted into a half-sleep, resting fitfully for about an hour and a half.


	2. Chapter 2

On the second day, she overloaded herself with media, trying to exhaust her mind with music, movies, books, the Internet. It had worked in the past – she could just read or watch TV until her eyes couldn't stay open anymore. Work had been a little fuzzy, but she had still functioned normally. Grissom hadn't even noticed when she spaced out while he was talking to her – though once Nicky had squinted at her and asked if she felt all right. But she had managed; she knew how. Her insomnia, though usually not quite as bad as yesterday, often forced her to work on limited sleep. She was used to it; she could do it, could keep going when her batteries were nearly empty. But she needed to get a little more rest today, at least four hours. She needed to recharge.

And so she watched _Contact_, then a few episodes from her _X-Files_ DVDs, then _Pretty in Pink_. When the movie was over, she flipped through the channels on her TV until she found a station halfway through showing _Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark_.

"Asps. Very dangerous. You go first," she recited along with the TV as she got up and made herself some nice warm lemon tea. When Indy had finally vanquished all the bad guys – or rather, the bad guys had vanquished themselves – she clicked the TV off and headed for the stereo. She arranged CDs in the five-disc changer: Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, The Doors, The Who, Eric Clapton.

"Rock out." She closed the CD drawer and punched play, then curled up on her couch with a blanket, a second cup of tea, a mystery novel, yesterday's newspaper, two magazines, and five catalogues.

Some time later, she glanced at the wall clock hanging over her breakfast bar. 7:38 p.m. She had arrived home at 11:30 a.m., and she didn't need to leave to go back to work until 10:00 p.m. at the very earliest. Las Vegas criminals appeared to be taking a vacation this week – there were no pressing cases, no hot evidence trails, no loose ends to tie up. It was making it very difficult to justify as much overtime as she liked to take.

Sighing, she headed for her desk, resorting to the haven for insomniacs world wide: the Internet. E-mail, games, posting boards, polls, quizzes, movie reviews, newspaper articles, and instant messenger all unfolded before her, and she grimaced determinedly as she opened Cubis. She was going to wear herself out. She had too.


	3. Chapter 3

Sara knew from years of experience that there's a point you reach when you're so tired you simply want to die, when every muscle aches and you can barely stand because exhaustion saps all strength from you until you're just a dry husk. She had reached that point by the next night at work. But once you get beyond that point, if you can make it, there's actually a comforting numbness on the other side. You don't feel any of the pain anymore, because you don't feel anything anymore, and a fresh wave of adrenaline gives you a pleasant buzz of energy. It was a nice natural high, and Sara was feeling it by the time she tried to lie down after work.

And so, on the third day she ended up cleaning. Her apartment, neat to begin with, was treated to a ceiling to floor scrubbing. She pulled all the books of her bookshelves, dusted each one meticulously, then put them all back, double-checking to make sure they were alphabetical order. Her bathroom reeked of Pine-Sol and her kitchen of bleach as she scrubbed and disinfected every exposed surface. She hauled out the vacuum cleaner, the mop, the broom, the feather duster and wielded each determinedly. Then she tackled any form of clutter left in the apartment, tossing out old magazines and papers, sorting through her financial files and paper clipping and labeling and stapling, refolding all the clothes in her drawers so that each shirt had crisply folded edges and each sock was rolled and stacked with its mate.

She even pulled out the box where she kept the memorabilia of her life, hauling it from its hiding place in the back of her closet. She opened it and began sorting and stacking and repacking, deciding which stuff she needed to keep and which she could throw away and never miss. Ticket stubs from her first date? Toss. Hawaiian lei from her first and only spring break trip? Toss. Perhaps she should just toss the whole box out. Photo of her and her roommate from San Francisco? Toss. Her first driver's license? Wince, toss, and try to forget the geeky grin and pimply face of her sixteen-year-old self. Term paper from Grissom's class with, "Lucid and insightful. See me before leaving for break" printed neatly across the bottom? She started a new pile to keep.

When she stood from her sorting crouch on the floor, her muscles ached fiercely, and she was deeply chilled despite the warm clothes she had bundled herself in. Work had been more of a struggle that day, but she had clenched her teeth and repeated, "I can do this. I will do this. No, I will _thrive_ on this. I can make it," like a mantra in her mind. Now she turned to the bed with a sense of despair. If she crawled between the sheets, would she be able to get the rest she was beginning to desperately need? Would Morpheus grant her the slumber she was close to begging for?

Sara slept for forty-five minutes that day.


	4. Chapter 4

By the fourth day, Sara was nearly weeping with exhaustion. She began to see things, shadowy blobs that rolled out of her direct line of sight. At other times, little glowing balls of light that resembled Tinkerbell seemed to dart across the room in front of her eyes. Words felt leaden, as though they were tripping over her lips and tumbling like little weights to the floor, and she stumbled over her words more times than she could count.

To her absolute horror, all she could seem to do was cry. She was tired. She wanted to sleep. She wanted the soothing restfulness of a dark, dreamless slumber. As she sat on her bed and stared listlessly into space – she was way beyond being able to come up with anymore activities to occupy her waking hours – tears welled in her eyes. She wasn't just mentally tired; every inch of her body ached, the pain dwelling deep in her very joints, and even lifting a hand to wipe away the tears that kept spilling over onto her cheeks felt like a gargantuan effort.

Her mind flitted about, butterfly-like, unable to stay in one place for more than a few moments. Her train of thought was disjointed and illogical, and yet continued to circle back to two topics time and again: her need for sleep, and Grissom. Both topics brought many questions, but few answers that would give her any resolution and closure. Why couldn't she sleep? Why had Grissom rejected her? Why had her insomnia suddenly flared so badly? Why couldn't she work up the courage to leave Vegas and Grissom behind? What was wrong with her? Why didn't Grissom want her? Did she need a new bed, a better mattress, a cup of warm milk?

And both topics kept the tears freely flowing as she laid, eyes stubbornly open, all day long.


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: **Thanks to those who've been reviewing! Here's a longer chapter for you, and even some characters other than Sara!

Thank to guess19, as always.

On the fifth day, Sara nearly collapsed in the locker room at work. She slammed her locker door and turned to head for the door, but she must have spun around too fast, because the next thing she knew the whole room was tilting frighteningly and the concrete floor was rising up to meet her. From somewhere nearby a voice cried out, "Whoa!" and then warm, wiry-strong arms were cradling her. She blinked rapidly to focus her eyes and met Archie's concerned gaze.

"Sara? Are you all right?" Greg, who had been all the way across the locker room only a few seconds ago, was now right at her side, hand on her shoulder. With a start, she realized that she was still cradled against Archie's chest, and she struggled to stand upright. She swayed slightly, trying to get her body weight balanced, then straightened.

The two men in the room with her were still gazing at her with matching puppy-dog eyes, big and brown and concerned. "Sara?" Archie ventured.

"I'm all right," she managed to say. "I just got a little lightheaded there for a minute."

Archie nodded. "The flu's going around the lab. Maybe you should get Grissom to give you the night off."

She smiled at his concern. "Thanks, Archie. I'll be all right." She knew she looked the part of the flu sufferer – she had barely recognized herself in the mirror this morning. Her hair was lank and brittle, her skin waxy and white, and the dark circles under her eyes dominated her face. No amount of make up could cover up the sickly cast to her face, though she had still tried and had finally given up and left the rather clownish attempt.

Archie nodded, returned her smile, and left the room. Greg stayed where he was, watching her closely.

"You sure you're okay?" he asked, eyes slightly narrowed. "You really do look terrible."

"I'll be all right," she repeated dully.

He nodded once, still looking doubtful. "Well, if you are getting the flu, you should come stay with – " here he lowered his voice to a stage whisper " – Nick and I." He smiled slightly. "I know it's no fun being sick all alone; there's no one to bring you soup and rub your sore muscles and listen to your justifiable bitching." When Nick strolled into the room, he raised his voice. "Besides, I could use another sane person at home to help me nag Nicky into shaving off his horrid little porn-star stache."

Nick glared. "Hey!"

"Boom chicka wow wow, Nick," Greg grinned.

"Thanks, Greggo." Sara managed a chuckle and a weak grin, though it was merely a shadow of her usual, famous, ought-to-be-patented "Sara Sidle Smile." "I'll keep that in mind."

As she stumbled towards the break room and assignments, she passed Catherine and Warrick flirting furiously in the hallway outside the Trace Lab while Hodges watched through the glass, rolling his eyes.

They broke off as she approached. "Shit," she heard Warrick mutter, staring at her.

"Sara," Catherine said, beckoning her over to them, "Are you sick? You look awful." She pressed the inside of her wrist to Sara's forehead in a universal mother-like gesture. "You aren't warm," she said, frowning.

Sara suppressed a deep, trembling shiver. She could have told Catherine that. "I'm all right," she managed around teeth that wanted desperately to chatter. "Just a little virus or something."

Warrick grimaced. "That sucks, girl. Grissom should send you home – you don't look like you're up to working today."

She shook her head. "I'll manage." Leaving Warrick and Catherine watching her as she walked away, she headed towards the bathroom. There she splashed a little water on her face, tried to fluff her hair, and pinched her cheeks and bit her lips to try to bring some color to her dead white face. Hoping fervently that she looked a little better, she again turned towards the break room and assignments.

Her hopes were shattered when she ran into Bobby and he winced. "Gawd, Sara, don't breathe on me," he said. "I don't want to give whatever you have to the baby." She just shook her head and brushed past him, leaving him calling out after her, "I hope Gris sends you home."

Finally, she managed to make it to the break room and eased her weeping body into a chair at the table. When Grissom breezed into the room, he swept the gathered CSIs with a cool gaze, and immediately began assignments. Sara's assignment slip was for a DB in the desert; she'd have to spend hours out there, searching the sand and gravel for clues, in an environment that was nearly as cold at night as it was hot by day.

And it was a solo.

"Wrap it up as quickly as you can," he said as he shoved the scrap of paper into her hand. "The criminals are making up for the rest of the week today. We're swamped." He barely glanced at her face before turning away and shuffling down the hall to his office.

At the end of the fifth day, she called a taxi – she didn't trust herself to drive anymore – and, stumbling over her words, managed to give the driver Nick and Greg's address. On the way, she used her cell phone to call in sick to work for the next day, felt briefly guilty about it, then thought about Grissom's detached, completely impersonal gaze as he handed her her assignment. "Fuck it," she whispered to herself as the cab pulled up in front of Nick and Greg's.


	6. Chapter 6

On the sixth day, she curled up with Nick and Greg on their huge couch and talked with them for hours. She was freezing cold now, her body succumbing to deep muscular quakes that emanated from her spine outward though Greg had layered her in a pair of thick pajama pants, a waffle-weave thermal shirt, and a fleece-lined hooded sweatshirt. He'd added two pairs of wool socks, and was muttering about finding gloves when Nick had picked her up bodily and wrapped her in a sheepskin and flannel blanket and settled her on the couch between the two of them.

"Sar, maybe we should get you to the hospital," Nick said. "This looks like a pretty serious case of the flu to me."

She shook her head gently, but even the slight movement was jarring. "I'm not sick. I just haven't been able to sleep… for five days."

"Jesus, Sara," Greg muttered.

Another deep-body shudder wracked her, and the two men wrapped their arms around her, trying to impart both steadiness and body heat.

"So why haven't you been sleeping?" Nicky asked. He gently brushed a hand over her cheek. "Something on your mind?"

She barely heard him. "Maybe. Sure. Lots of things," she answered distractedly. Her head was heavy, so heavy. She could barely hold it upright.

"Like what?"

She gave up the battle to hold her head up and let it loll onto Greg's shoulder. "Stuff. Old cases. My life." She fluttered her hands lightly and stared, intrigued by how bird-like her fingers looked. Several fairy lights flashed by and circled her head, and she smiled slightly dazedly. "Tinkerbell, and the meaning of life. Quantum physics."

"Tinkerbell?" Greg asked confusedly.

"I keep seeing her…" she let her voice trail off.

Greg looked at Nick, and nodded as the other man murmured, "Sleep deprivation psychosis."

"Am I psychotic?" she asked. "Probably. It's in my blood. Nasty stuff. Gotta get it out of me. That's why Grissom didn't want me, I bet. Psychotic."

This time Nick looked at Greg, and they did their little we're-a-couple-and-we-communicate-without-words thing. It made Sara sick.

"Have you tried taking anything to knock you out?" Nick finally asked.

She frowned. "Don't like drugs. And I promised Grissom I wouldn't drink to sleep anymore. He probably doesn't think I can do it, thinks I'm a drunk. I'll show him."

Greg bit his lip, then stood. "Well, why don't I get you a nice breakfast? That always puts me to sleep – a full stomach." Sara settled comfortably on Nick's shoulder while Greg was gone, banging pots and pans out in the kitchen and muttering about someone using up all the baking powder. When he returned about twenty minutes later with three steaming plates of buttermilk pancakes, the smell grounded her in reality again, albeit very briefly. He handed her, and then Nick, a plate, pausing to drop a kiss on top of Nick's buzzed head.

"Marry me?" she managed to say as she swallowed her first forkful. "These are great."

"I know," Greg said smugly, settling back on his side of the couch and folding his hands over Jim Morrison's face in his T-shirt.

"You can't have him, though," Nick said. "He's mine."

The soft look they sent each other made Sara want to cry, but it was brief sensation, because the next thing she knew her mind was whirling off in another direction. She wondered dazedly why Nick and Greg had their Christmas tree up in May. When she blinked, the tree disappeared, and she stared, awed, at the void where it had been. A huge black hole grew on the wall, and outside all the birds were flying backwards in the sky, and then Tinkerbell was back, circling her head.

She moaned. "It's like someone's playing air hockey with my brain."

Nick stood and gathered her up in his arms. "Okay, Sar, let's try bed for you." He carried her into his and Greg's bedroom and tucked her into their bed, then smoothed a hand over her hair and kissed her forehead. She would have found the gesture sweet if she hadn't been so absorbed with watching the ghost standing in the corner of the room.

It was her father, and he was holding a bloody knife and Grissom's decapitated head.


	7. Chapter 7

On the seventh day, Sara was barely coherent. Voices came to her, first very loud – Greg was shouting, in a deep, booming, wrath-of-God tone that they should take her to the hospital – then so softly that they were nothing but a whisper that barely scratched at the surface of her consciousness. Sometimes the voices sped up, and she could hear Nicky speaking in a rapid, high-pitched, Alvin-and-the-Chipmunks-style voice to someone on the phone. She caught a few phrases when his voice periodically slowed down: "Really sick… Damn it, Gris..."

The door to the bedroom swung open, and through the black haze that was clouding her vision, she saw a figure stride into the room. The fog rolled back from his face, and she realized it was Grissom.

Grissom's mouth was moving, but no words were penetrating through the cotton that swathed her mind. She could see his eyes – such beautiful blue eyes – and for a moment managed to focus her own eyes on them.

"Sara, honey?" she heard. He knelt down beside her bed.

Vague indignation rose in her. When she was fine, healthy, normal Sara, he ignored her, stared right through her as if she were as transparent as the ghost of her father that was still standing in the corner. When she was sick or injured or pulled over for drunk driving, that's when he was kind to her, that's when he showed up to help her, that's when he called her "honey."

She would show him; she would send him packing. Gathering what little strength she had, she tried to raise a hand to push him away, but it felt as every bone had been replaced with Jell-O.

And now Grissom was slowly standing and climbing onto the bed next to her. He pressed his body up against her back, and some of his body heat began to seep into her and warm the frozen marrow of her bones. His big, warm hand rested on her hip bone, and she felt him press a soft kiss to the back of her neck. She whimpered with pleasure.

"Just sleep," he murmured. "We'll talk in the morning. Just close your eyes and sleep now, honey." To Sara's surprise, her eyelids felt heavy. She could feel the heat from Grissom's hand spreading through her body, making her muscles go lax.

On the seventh day, Grissom came to her. And on the seventh day, Sara slept.

**AN: **Don't worry – there'll be a much longer epilogue to this little tale coming soon!


	8. Epilogue

**AN: **Thanks goes to guess19 for betaing, and for reading the first ending I wrote and telling me it sucked, then putting up with me when I moaned about not knowing how to rewrite it. I'm pretty pleased with the new ending and hope everyone who's been reading since Chapter 1 is too.

Thanks for reading and reviewing!

**Epilogue: Waking**

Sara opened her eyes. She noted immediately that the lids no longer felt like they weighed several tons as they had during the past week. Her whole body was bathed in the most delicious warmth; as her eyes slowly focused on her fingers resting on the pillow near her head, she saw that for the first time in months, the nail beds were flushed a bright, healthy pink instead of their usual bluish purple tinge.

A rustling of papers made her look up, and she realized that what she had thought was a pillow under her head was actually Grissom's abdomen. He was propped up slightly against the headboard, peering through his glasses at the journal he held in one hand; the other hand was slowly stroking absently over Sara's hair. Suddenly embarrassed, Sara sat up and pulled away from him. He regarded her solemnly.

"Good morning."

"How long did I sleep?" she asked, trying to control the flush rising in her cheeks.

He glanced at the clock. "About nine hours."

She gaped at him. "_Nine_ hours?"

He nodded. "From what Nick and Greg tell me, you needed it, plus a lot more."

"You don't understand," she said. "I haven't slept for more than five hours at a stretch in years. Possibly decades."

"Why?" he asked softly.

Embarrassed again, she looked away, tracing a pattern on Nick and Greg's bedspread with her thumbnail. "I have a lot on my mind."

Grissom drew in a deep breath. "Sara…Is it because of me?"

She glanced up at him. His face was clouded with pain and confusion, and a little – was that hope? "I won't lie," she finally said, studying his face as she spoke. "You've been part of the problem these last few years. But Grissom, you're not the only rough spot in my life – just the most recent. There's a lot in my past that contributes – you know some of it already."

He nodded slowly, but didn't respond. She sat back, flexing her fingers, enjoying the alertness in her limbs and lack of soreness in her muscles. Suddenly remembering the hallucinations she had been having, she whipped her head around to check the corner where her father's ghost had been, then nearly laughed out loud. There was a chair in the corner with a three foot doll dressed as Tim Curry's character in _Rocky Horror Picture Show_, complete with fishnets, sitting on it. Nothing more sinister than that. When Grissom spoke again it startled her.

"I can't make up for the past," he said slowly, "particularly events that I wasn't even a party to." He took a deep breath. "But Sara – if you're still interested – I'd like to try to make the future a little better."

To her surprise, her heart didn't leap at his invitation as it might have a year or two ago. Instead, wariness filled her. "Why this sudden change of heart?" she asked cautiously.

He looked away from her, staring out the window at the deepening twilight. "For a long while, I told myself that the timing was wrong for us. I was your teacher and you were my student, and then I was in Vegas and you were in San Francisco. Then you had only been in Vegas for a little while and I didn't want people to think I called you here and hired you just because I was in lo- was attracted to you. Then you were dating Hank…" he trailed off. When he began speaking again, his voice was low. "And then I was losing my hearing, and I was terrified and confused."

"That was over two years ago, Gris," Sara said. At his surprised look, she waved a hand. "Oh please, Gris, do you think I couldn't tell? I'm an investigator at the second-best crime lab in the country; I can put two and two together and get four."

"I should have known better," he said gruffly. "Well, after that, when there was a possibility of the timing being right, I – I chickened out."

Sara suppressed a snort of hysterical laughter. "I'm sorry, you what?"

He looked at her reproachfully over the glasses he still wore. "I was terrified. I started making up excuses in my mind – I was too old, it was inappropriate for us to have a relationship when I was your supervisor, we couldn't risk our jobs like that, you must be interested in other men – hell, I half convinced myself that you were in love with either Greg or Nick or both."

Now she did snort with laughter. "Greggo or Nicky?"

Sighing, Grissom tossed the journal aside and nodded ruefully. "Yes. I only just realized when I came over yesterday why that was such a ridiculous idea."

She froze. "You mean – they – "

Grissom nodded again. "It would have been hard to hide once I was here: living together but not telling any of us – except you apparently – that they were, only one bed in the house, photos of the two of them together all over."

"Oh my God," Sara said dazedly. "They came out to you for me, for my sake." It was such a dangerous, selfless act that she was overcome with an urge to cry.

"It won't make any difference at work," Grissom said firmly. "I don't intend to tell anyone, and it certainly doesn't matter to me." He smiled slightly. "Though I'll admit it surprised me. I had no idea." He turned to Sara. "I didn't ask them – how long – ?"

She pursed her lips, trying to remember. "A long time. Three years? Since right around the time Nicky had that stalker." Now it was her turn to smile. "They're perfect together, Gris. When there's no one else around, you should see them. They're so affectionate and so – so _loving_."

"I'm glad to know they're happy," Grissom said. "And frankly, if they hadn't told me, I don't think we'd be having this conversation. They were the ones who made me decide to see if you were still willing to try this; I figured if Nicky and Greg can risk everything at work by maintaining an unorthodox relationship, I can certainly try too." He leaned forward and took Sara's hands. "Are you – are you still willing to try this with me, despite our past, and despite my age, and despite the fact that we'll have to keep it a secret at work?"

She took a deep breath. "Yes, on one condition: if you're worried about something between us, or something's just bothering you in general, you tell me. No shutting down, no shutting me out." When Grissom nodded, she continued, "I'm serious, Grissom. You fuck with me again, and I'm gone. As it is I can barely sleep; I can't handle anymore rejection."

He nodded again. "Fair enough, as long as you'll point it out to me if I do start shutting you out," he said. "Often I don't intend to, and I don't even realize I am – it's habit. I've always been a very introverted person."

"No kidding," she teased gently, grinning.

He smiled back, then raised his hand to trace along her lips. "I love when you smile," he said. He took a deep breath and slowly leaned forward to kiss her.

The warmth that Sara was still basking in came to a roaring boil within her. She slid her arms up around Grissom and drew him in closer to her, loving the heat and strength of his body pressed all along hers. When they drew apart, Grissom was nearly panting.

"Why don't we go back to my townhouse?" he said. "I think you need to get more rest, and I'd like to help you… relax so that you can."

Her lips twitched. "Oh you would, would you?"

He nodded solemnly. "It's very important – my top priority. But I don't think," he glanced down, "Nick and Greg's bed is the most appropriate or ideal location for what I had in mind."

"Neither do we!" came Greg's shout from the hallway outside the closed bedroom door.

_Three weeks later_

Sara shut the door to the townhouse softly, then gently deposited her light jacket and her purse on the end of the breakfast bar. She'd stayed at work for an extra two and half hours, wrapping up the case she had been working and catching up on some of the paperwork that had been piling up in her workstation. She fully expected Grissom to be in his bed asleep by now, and she smiled softly as she debated whether she should just slip silently into bed with him and let him sleep, or if she should strip, slide on top of him as he slept, and give him a pleasant awakening.

In the three weeks since her insomnia had reared its ugly head, Sara had only slept alone once, when Grissom had spent the day in a neighboring county after consulting on a crime scene with etymological evidence. She'd never slept so much, never felt more rested, never had more energy. While her performance at work, always exceptional, hadn't really changed, she knew she had become at least a more pleasant person to work with. And now when she was lying in bed awake, she was usually engaged in something far more enjoyable than counting the knots on the back of her closet door.

When she reached Grissom's bedroom, she stopped and stared. Not only was Grissom not in bed, but the bed was covered with plastic sheeting. Grissom himself was up on a stepladder, paintbrush in one hand, an open can of paint balancing precariously on the top step of the ladder.

She blinked in amazement. The once-white ceiling of his bedroom was now covered with an array of shapes and words. A horde of realistically-detailed insects crowded one corner, a meticulously complete skeleton was spread across another, and the periodic table was traced in pencil in a third. Beautiful scrolls and flourishes surrounded the light that hung from the center of the ceiling. Random words, many of them forensics-related, were painted in a lovely flowing script. As she watched, Grissom added color to the wing of an intricate butterfly that was traced in the fourth corner. Her mouth hung open.

"Gris?"

He turned to smile at her. "Hi honey." He glanced back at the ceiling. "I think we're going to have to sleep at your apartment today while this dries and the room airs out a bit."

"Um…," she squinted at him, "Can I ask what you're doing first?"

He grinned, looking immensely pleased with himself. "I'm painting you pictures. These are so whenever you can't sleep and I'm not here, you can look at these paintings instead of staring at a blank ceiling."

She stood unmoving for a moment, stunned not only by the thoughtfulness of his gesture but by his casual assumption that his bed would also be her bed for a good long time yet to come, then smiled and beckoned him down from the ladder so she could thank him properly. For the first time in well over a decade, she could see her future stretching out in front of her, and it didn't include only relentless dedication to her work and sleepless days and empty routines. It suddenly included Grissom as an active participant. And, also for the first time in well over a decade, she wanted to be an active participant in her life as well.

**FIN**


End file.
